Comment by picafrost

1 day ago

Internet denizens love opening a locked box. This phenomenon has been weaponized by the gaming industry in the form of loot boxes.

6 comments

picafrost

Reply
astrobe_  1 day ago

It is strange to me that people obsess on programming in-game with "red stone" etc. That said I am dayjob programmer so the last thing I want to do on my free time and is to program stuff.

I made a game that uses the Luanti "voxel" engine (MC-likes games of course, but also transposition of other genres), and even programming that is bit of a chore but that's the price to pay to play the game you want to play (there's much more to that than just programming/modding; game design is a rabbit hole).

But I think that it would be more rewarding for those who are curious about programming to start modding, especially in Luanti because it is relatively well documented and it's Lua. In a way, making it rain with the programmable particle spawner the engine provides is a loot box locked by an API, with hints on how to open it in the docs ;-)

  • programd  1 day ago

    > game design is a rabbit hole

    Game engine design is a rabbit hole :)

    Game design is the ultimate lockbox - you're unlocking an entire imaginary world which has some platonic existance in your mind.

    And since you mentioned Luanti, it deserves to be much better known as a credible open alternative to Minecraft. You could do a lot worse then designing/prototyping your game with Luanti as the game engine.

    https://www.luanti.org/

  • rahkiin  1 day ago

    I think it is the fun of working towards simple goals, in a restricticed visual environment, in a gamified way. The challenge is the restriction. Starting with and and or gates while at work you would be writing CRUD

  • lawlessone  19 hours ago

    Yeah i thought similar.

    I like watching videos about these contraptions people build. Wouldn't dream of making on myself.